From Ports to Seaweed: UNIDO Accelerates Blue Industry Solutions during the 21st General Conference
Riyadh, 24 November 2025: The Twenty-first Session of the UNIDO General Conference was an occasion to showcase UNIDO’s leadership in advancing Blue Industry. During the side event “Accelerating Blue Industry: Scaling Inclusive and Sustainable Industrial Solutions Across Blue Sectors”, a high-level panel of government leaders and industry experts explored emerging priorities. The subsequent roundtable, titled “Partnerships for a Thriving Blue Industry”, delved more deeply into collaboration opportunities to align efforts, mobilize investment and shape collective action in key Blue sectors. Moderated by Mr. Martin Koehring, Sustainable Blue Economy Consultant at UNEP FI, the sessions benefited from substantive exchanges that spanned policy, technical and industry perspectives.
A key highlight of both sessions was the presentation of four new initiatives spearheaded or co-developed by UNIDO, underscoring the Organization’s expanding leadership in strategic Blue Industry sectors. The UN Global Seaweed Initiative (UN GSI), developed jointly with sister UN agencies and a growing group of partner countries, promotes responsible, value-added seaweed industries that enhance coastal livelihoods and supply emerging bio-based markets. The UNIDO Blue Ports Initiative positions ports as strategic interconnection points between land and sea, making them key drivers of competitiveness, investment, and low-carbon industrial growth. The UNIDO-WTCA Blue Economy Global Call 2026 targets innovative Blue Economy entrepreneurs and mobilizes investment to scale their solutions, while the ScaleX:Bluetech UNIDO program seeks to accelerate deployment of cutting-edge maritime and water-related solutions.
As highlighted during the opening intervention by Mr. Alejandro Rivera Rojas, Chief of UNIDO’s MSME Competitiveness, Quality and Job Creation Division, these initiatives are part of the Organization’s larger Blue Industry framework, which positions water-based economies as strategic industrial platforms capable of generating jobs, driving value addition, and strengthening climate-resilient production systems. He also noted that UNIDO’s USD 54 million Blue Industry portfolio currently supports strategic sectors such as Blue food, maritime trade, tourism, BlueTech, marine biotechnology and Blue finance, and continues to expand through new partnership-based initiatives.
The high-level policy dialogue that followed brought together distinguished government representatives, including H.E. Jonathan Reid, Minister of Industry, Innovation, Science and Technology of Barbados; H.E. Andrew Baasaron, Minister of Economic Affairs, Entrepreneurship & Technological Innovation of Suriname; H.E. Susan Eckey, Permanent Representative of Norway to the United Nations in Vienna; Ms. Silvana Peñaherrera, Subsecretary at Ecuador’s Ministry of Production, Foreign Trade, Investments and Fisheries; and Mr. Franco Fernández Rodríguez, Director General for Strategic Circular Economy Projects at Mexico’s Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources.
Panelists provided reflections on national strategies, local best practices and regional perspectives for building resilient, competitive, inclusive and future-oriented Blue Industries, while identifying key avenues for collaboration with UNIDO.
In the subsequent panels and roundtable, senior officials, industry leaders and technical experts from Blue Economy sectors discussed ongoing partnerships and future opportunities for joint action around UNIDO’s new initiatives on seaweed valorization, Blue Ports, and Blue entrepreneurial innovation. Speakers included H.E. Suliman Bin Khalid AlMazroua, President of the Saudi Ports Authority; Ms. Siti Maftukhah, Deputy Director and Maritime Affairs Coordinator at Indonesia’s Ministry of National Development Planning; Mr. Eduardo Sfoglia, Head of the International Advisory Office at Brazil’s Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture; Ms. Diana Battaggia, Head of UNIDO ITPO Italy; Ms. Cristina Sbaizero, CEO of World Trade Center Trieste; Ms. Huma Qureshi, General Manager of the Emirates Shipping Association; Mr. Morty Fazal, CEO of C-Weed, Mwani Mariculture Ltd.; Mr. George Gregory, CEO of Malta Enterprise; and Mr. Nafal Hassani, Manager at Afreximbank.
The sessions reaffirmed UNIDO’s commitment to accelerating sustainable Blue industrialization and opened avenues for multi-institutional cooperation, reinforcing the Organization’s role in advancing a results-oriented Blue Industry agenda that supports shared prosperity and a resilient, competitive water-based economy.
For more information, please contact Alejandro Rivera Rojas at A.RIVERA-ROJAS [at] unido.org
